Lemonade and Iced Coffee

We thought a good start to get a feeling for the neighborhood and its people was to spend time there. So, we opened a Lemonade Stand, that also offered Iced Coffee. We set up shop at 12:30 on a public lot on Meadow Street, near the corner of Paulson Ave.

For the first 45 minutes not much happened. For a while a guy who was sitting on the porch in the building across the street was watching us. His shirt gave us a smile. It said: “I am with stupid”, with a big arrow pointing towards the right. After a while he left his seat and walked around the block. Cars passed by, people looked. A man with a couple of white plastic bags (probably food delivery) rang the bell at the building across the street a couple of times, until an elderly woman opened and took the bags in. Around 1:15pm, a middle aged man who seemed to live in another building across the street approached us to get a Lemonade. We asked if he would like to get a small or a big cup. He said, that he was a pretty big guy (which was true) so he could handle a big one. We put ice in the cup, added the organic lemonade, put on the lid, gave him a straw, he gave us a dollar.

Around 1:25pm a middle aged woman with a loud voice who passed by on the other side of the street described our set up to someone she was on her cell phone with. Shortly after that a van slowed down in front of us, the front window went down, the back door slid open and two woman, enjoying what they were seeing took pictures of us with their cell phones. One of the woman said: “I am telling everyone about that”. Cars passed by, more cars passed by. A few people walked by on the other side of the street. A few laughed or waved. About one hour later an older lady approached us inquiring about the license plate of our car, and if we had a permit to do this, and where we were from. We had a little bit of an exchange and when she walked away she concluded: “You are strangers in my neighborhood”. A little later another elderly woman in a blue t-Shirt walked by raising similar concerns as the first one, just more aggressively, and without giving us any opportunity to say anything. A car with some teenagers stopped across the street and the driver said: “Dude, don’t do that. This is dangerous”. Another car stopped and the driver asked for an iced coffee, which we prepared. Then, a man who was trying to visit somebody in the building across the street who probably wasn’t home, sat down at the porch. Louis, waved to him, and he waved back. We asked him about the crickets and because they were so loud up there in the tree, he couldn’t hear and came over. We chatted for quite some time, then he went back and sat down on the porch again. Around 3:45pm a police car approached us. Window rolled down, the  police officer in the driver seat inquired about what we were doing. Then, the elderly woman in the blue T-Shirt appeared again and announced: “I was calling you, because they don’t have a permit, and there are no bathrooms, and they are white people trying to sell us stuff, etc. The police officer asked about what white people were trying to sell what kind of stuff and that he didn’t think that it was a criminal activity to run a lemonade stand, whereas the woman replied that she just wanted to make sure the police knew that we were here. A mother with her child approached and because the police was right there and we didn’t have a permit, the little boy got his lemonade for free. The elderly woman went away saying that it doesn’t make sense to call the police. The police officer stayed and asked more questions (where we are from, where we are staying in Pittsburgh, who owns the property, what our profession is and who we are associated with) and then informed us, that this is a dangerous place, especially with a child and that he would advise that we should pack up right now. We said, that we were planning to pack up around 4 pm anyway, but that it would look bad, if we would do that immediately after the police was here, especially since we would like to come back tomorrow. We asked if it would be ok to stay at least another 10 minutes after they left. He looked at his big watch and nodded and then they drove off. More cars passed by and around 4:10pm we packed up and went back to the Kingsley Center, where we were to attend the Consensus meeting.

It would be so much easier if attending meetings would give us ideas about what to do in Larimer. The engaged members of the community are right there sitting on a big table, introducing themselves, their agendas, their concerns, there are printed out agendas, projected plans and diagrams and bullet points on the wall, everyone puts their contact information in the sign in sheets, people talk loud and clear, its interesting to listen, we get the opportunity to introduce ourselves… but… things become quickly  complicated. At least for us. One gets caught up in the details, one looses the overview. The lemonade stand approach seems more effective for us to experience the cross section of people, but huuuu…. it’s true, it costs quite some effort to sit out there on that empty lot and expose ourselves as what we are – the strangers.